Martin Berkeley

Active in Hollywood from 1943, screenwriter Martin Berkeley alternated between MGM and Columbia during the war years. On the plus side, he co-wrote four of MGM's Dr. Gillespie features, and collaborated with Dwight Babcock on the script of Columbia's haunting So Dark the Night (1946), written in collaboration with Dwight Babcock. Berkeley's chief claim to fame lay in his astonishing behavior while testifying before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee during the communist witch-hunt of the early 1950s. At first, he denied indulging in left-leaning politics, stating "It is well-documented that I have fought communism consistently inside [The Screen Actors Guild] and out"; then he suddenly did an about-face, claiming he'd been a card-carrying Red for seven years. To save his own hide, Berkeley glibly told the HUAC that 155 of his fellow Hollywoodites had been active communists -- single-handedly damaging more careers than any other "friendly witness." To quote the authors of The Inquisition in Hollywood, Berkeley's courtroom performance "indelibly engraved the Second Hearing with perfidy." Though Martin Berkeley managed to salvage his career, he was thereafter confined to such mediocrities as Universal's Tarantula (1955) and The Deadly Mantis (1957).